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30 January 2012

Monday Meal Planning

In my adventures reading around the Blogosphere I often see people planning out their meals for the week on Monday. This could save me so much time and grocery shopping trips during the week, but it is taking the time to plan such a thing that is complicated.

First of all Monday is the busiest day of my work week, I have been under a pile of paperwork since I came in, and I came in early. I have photo shoots to start, and other tasks to complete. I might have to move this project to another day.

Second my grand plan was to plan a meal that I have all the ingredients for to cook for dinner tonight so I won't have to run to the store after I am done at the studio, but come to find out that the recipe I had in mind needs 2 more critical ingredients to complete.

I am not real big on the eat this on Monday, and that on Tuesday plan. I like to decide what I want to eat as I go along, but I do see the benefit in planning out meals for the week before going to the grocery store. So I am going to plan out 6 meals as I write this post, leaving one day for a meal out.

I am hoping it will result in less grocery store trips. I like to buy fresh veggies so I shop often, but I do find myself making too many small trips for 1 or 2 ingredients. I am also hoping it will lead to trying more new recipes as well. I have been so busy lately that we are on the quick and easy dinner routine.

I too post my "menu plan" on Monday, though I don't actually do the planning on Monday. I usually plan my meals out several weeks to a month at a time and I just leave a few days open for when I get inspired to try something new (or dont feel like cooking). Sometimes I go so far as to write up the posts in advance and keep them in my draft folder. That way on Sunday night, I just have to edit a little and add photos and links before I hit publish. Visiting from the Alexa Blog hop!~JamieS

I like reading people's Meal Plans more than I like making my own:-). I usually plan 3-4 days ahead, but more than that and I find I don't end up sticking to my meal plan. so on Saturday morning or Friday night I plan for S,S,M,T and then on Monday or Tuesday I plan W,TH, F. That seems to work for me. My weeks are too crazy and unpredictable to plan a whole week...the Balamic chicken sounds good to me!

I have found it's better on my budget and my waistline if I can plan out the week but it's seems almost impossible for me these days so I understand. Today I even went to the store and only came back with dinner for tonight (Smoked Salmon, Sauteed spinach & couscous, and tomorrow a chicken stir fry. That's it then Thursday I guess back to the drawing bored. Some of your recipes posted look good. So maybe I will try them later on in the week when I am drawing a blank! PS. New follower. Your name really caught my eye on the Tuesday blog hop. Cute idea!

Heather - Thanks for the link, I will visit your blog. So far it has made things quicker, but it is only Wednesday ;) I do need to go out and grab a few more things, as well as lunch food for my husband today so that will be grocery trip #2. I am planning a full report back next Monday! I am already a follower of your site, but will stop by and say hello.

We've been doing this for awhile, but we make our list and trip for the week on Sunday morning. We also assign a person to be responsible for each day - if we don't we end up eating too much fast food! When we first decided to go this route, we used the "Grocery Bag" feature from Every Day Food - it worked great. Now we pick our own meals, but it helped us make planning a habit. We also recently started using Ziplist, which has saved on some list-writing time. Coincidentally, we made that same General Tso's a few weeks ago and it was fabulous!